StarSeeker

The land was different and familiar at the same time. Wild stared at the slate, memorizing every change in elevation, river path, even the coast line. It was all so different, but the towers and shrines that stood (though much fewer in number) proclaimed that Wild wasn't far from home.

And maybe Hyrule was here.

The Traveler had been missing for two weeks, his beloved sword the only evidence he existed.

Twilight had caught just the barest hint of his scent.

Wild felt a trepidation, a dread, coiling and bubbling within him.

If they were in his distant past, it was all too likely the Yiga were here.

If that was true, then Rulie was in terrible danger.

Wild petitioned they travel to Kakariko and seek out the Sheikah. Even if the Yiga weren't involved, they would still be the Chain's best bet at finding their missing member.

Thankfully, they all agreed.

They reached Kakariko two days later and met Miharu, a middle-aged woman and chief of the village.

What Miharu shared only solidified Wild's fears — people had been going missing for months. While the Yiga hadn't fully formed yet this far into the past, the seeds were there in the rogue Sheikah, those who fought against the Kingdom to keep the technology, develop it, use it.

They were scattered across the continent, the shrines their bases. There were dozens, and it would take too long to find Hyrule.

There was one saving grace.

The Sheikah suspected they had at least a few traitors among them. There was one they were almost certain about: Ryota, a young man who disappeared periodically, sometimes for days at a time.

Wolfie caught his scent, and they were on the move.

They found Ryota miles from any settlements, but Wild didn't feel any joy on discovering how much closer they were to finding Hyrule.

No, the more Ryota spoke, the more Wild felt something well up in himself — something he didn't feel often but always burned bright, hot, and dangerous like the fires of Death Mountain.

It turned venomous, making his heart pound, body restless, fingers itching for his sword when Ryota brought them to the shrine. Wild almost let his rage consume him then. He knew the shrines had been converted to rogue bases, but seeing the proof with his own eyes was different.

These shrines were meant to be safe havens, a place he would one day use as training grounds to face the Calamity.

Curse the ones that dared to harm others here.

The rage refused to fade in the day after they rescued Hyrule. Most of the Chain had been sent back to Kakariko so Hyrule could get treatment for the horrors the rogues had put him through.

After that, Wild, Twilight, and Time stayed with the remaining Sheikah to gather evidence, any information that they could use to bring the rogues to justice. Wild found his feet wandering without his bidding, taking him back to where they'd found Hyrule.

Wild glared at the apparatus before him. It was a cruel mockery of the Shrine of Resurrection. The design was close enough, sure. But the very sight of it sent a fire through his veins. Sure, he was thankful to be alive. But no one should ever have to live through relearning who they were.

Hyrule had been frail, gaze distant. Wild wasn't even sure if he'd understood what anyone had said.

He could remember emerging from the Shrine like it was yesterday. He'd stepped back into life on the Great Plateau, stumbling as his muscles remembered how to walk and climb. The Old Man — no, the King — had guided him. Wild had remembered how to eat, how to speak, how to swing a weapon.

It didn't take much. Muscle memory and language had stuck with him.

He didn't know if Hyrule could do the same. Not in his state.

The Sheikah had interrogated any rogues they could. When they'd learned just how often Hyrule had been killed and brought back, Wild had been forced to leave to expel everything in his stomach.

Twelve times. They had killed Hyrule twelve times. Murdered him, for no reason other than convenience. And they brought him back, made him forget everything, just as many.

Wild had felt some bitterness during his journey on the choice made for him. He'd wondered if the Link from before the Calamity would have consented to the Shrine. Wild would never know.

Wild didn't have all of his memories from Before. He doubted he'd ever recover them all.

What would twelve times in the apparatus do to Hyrule's mind?

Wild didn't know.

And he would make sure no one would ever have to experience this again.

This was not the Shrine he'd slept a century away in — that was already hidden away on what would become the Great Plateau. This apparatus was a mockery. No one would ever have any need of it.

It would be much more efficient to use his bomb arrows, but Wild had too much fury building up in him. It was bound to bubble over and erupt and hurt someone if he didn't do this.

He summoned a cobble crusher from his Slate and approached the apparatus, giving it one last glare. He raised it above his head and slammed it into the basin.

That wasn't enough.

He slammed the cobble crusher into the side, and it only dented.

Not enough.

Again, he slammed his weapon into the basin, sending a small chunk into the far corner of the room.

Still not enough.

The fire in his veins came to life then, filling him with an energy he'd only experienced when fighting the Blights and Ganon itself. Wild lost count of how many times he slammed the cobble crusher into the apparatus, but it was enough to shatter just one thing: the cobble crusher.

Wild summoned a sledgehammer without missing a beat, the fire burning in him threatening to consume everything.

Let it, said a part of him, deep in the recesses of his mind. His throat burned, his breath came in heaves, there were sparks of blue before him, but it wasn't enough.

Soon, though, the sledgehammer shattered in his grip.

It wasn't enough.

Wild summoned a savage Lynel bow, one rigged to shoot five arrows at once. He'd stocked up on bomb arrows recently.

He didn't need to line up his shot. The apparatus was still right in front of him. He nocked his five arrows, drew back the string and released a moment later.

BANG!

The explosion threw him back, his ears rang, heat washed over him, threatening to consume him-

But it still wasn't enough.

A scream he couldn't hear tore through his throat. He stumbled back up to his feet and drew more arrows. He nocked them, apparatus firmly in his sights-

Something grabbed him before he could draw back, pinning his arms, forcing him to drop his bow. He wasn't going back— Hyrule wasn't going back—

Movement, and someone was before him. The scar and tattoos were familiar, but that didn't matter. Wild had to finish what he'd started, he hadn't done enough. He tried to push his elbows back, tried to force his way free, but whoever had him was strong, he couldn't get loose—

Hands on his face, forcing his gaze up. His vision cleared — When did Time get there? Time's expression spoke of fright. Had something happened? Did more of those traitors come back? Would they try to finish what they started?

Time's lips were moving, but Wild couldn't hear him over the ringing in his ears.

"What was that?" Wild asked. Or — he thought he did. He couldn't hear his own voice.

He tried to lift his hands to his ears, but his arms were still locked by his sides. Whoever had him wasn't letting go.

Time's hands moved, forming words he'd forgotten he'd known. "Can you understand me?" Time signed.

Wild nodded. If traitors had returned, Time was entirely too calm about it. Well, he still looked worried, but what about? What had happened?

"You need to drink a potion," Time continued. He fished in his pouch and produced a bottle with red liquid.

Wild didn't think he was injured. But he took it anyways when the arms pinning his fell away. He really needed to get back to work on the apparatus. He bent down to pick up his bow, but he stumbled, Time catching him by his aching shoulders. Now the adrenaline was starting to fade-

No, it didn't need to fade. As the potion worked through him, his energy welled up, heating up and burning once more. The apparatus had to be destroyed.

Wild tried to take a step towards it, but Time kept a firm hold on his shoulders. What was he doing? Didn't he understand?! It had to be destroyed, no one else should-

The world spun around him, threatening to turn upside down. Why was he so dizzy?

Time's mouth was moving again. Wild could just hear his voice over the ringing in his ears. He put a hand up to his face and felt something wet rolling down his face.

Oh.

That blast had ruptured his eardrums, Wild realized as he saw the red on his fingers.

The potion was already at work, turning his world from ringing silence to a muffled mess. He heard his blood pounding, could feel it dribbling from his ears.

He was fine. He could take it apart. Smash it. Leave no trace. No one would ever — should never — have to ever face what Hyrule had.

Wild struggled against the arms. Someone was saying something, shouting, he couldn't hear the words.

And then, he saw the apparatus, still whole and complete. All he'd done was knock off a few small pieces of metal.

All his energy left him, then, his knees going weak, his breath coming in heaves.

Wild fell, but the arms kept him from hitting the ground. They held him close. Time helped lower him to the ground as he shook.

They were saying things to him again, but he couldn't tell. They could've been words of encouragement or admonishment. They would've sounded the same. It didn't matter.

He hadn't done enough.

Finally, the potion finished working. Words were working into his head.

"…blew yourself up…"

"…gotta be careful, Cub… enough to worry about…"

"I'm sorry I couldn't do enough," Wild said. His own words still sounded so muffled.

He had never been enough. He hadn't been enough to defeat the Calamity the first time. And he would never be able to do enough to return Hyrule to who he was Before.

…He hated that he had to capitalize "Before" for Hyrule now, too. No one should ever have that experience.

"It's not fair," he found himself saying. "It's not fair."

The other person, the one who wasn't Time, had a hand on his back. He grumbled out words Wild couldn't catch. Still, he recognized the voice.

He couldn't believe Twilight and Time, of all people, had watched him lose control like that. At least Warriors wasn't there to witness his failure.

Wild's eyes burned from the smoke. He swiped at them, wincing as they came away wet.

Oh. He was crying.

None of this was going to help Hyrule. Goddess, Hyrule. When they'd left, Hyrule had asked who they all were. Again.

Wild couldn't take it any more. He'd been needed back here, at this facility, to help translate what he could of Ancient Sheikah.

He had his own mission, to destroy the Apparatus.

Well, look how successful he was. A failure, just like he would be ten thousand years in this future.

Wild finally managed to calm himself down enough to get Time and Twilight to stop hovering. Now, they could finish the search like they'd come to do.

The Sheikah wanted any of the research left behind so they could convict the rogues in their own judicial system.

Wild knew better, though. Many of the Sheikah would be hunted down and killed by the Hyrulean government for their technology. And he could say nothing about it.

The research notes weren't kept on paper like he'd expected. Instead, they were kept on a slate in a room with a strange looking metal table.

It looked out of place — it was too high to eat from if one were seated at it. And who would want to eat in a room like this, anyways? The cabinets lining the wall weren't homey in any way, no windows, no chairs.

(He knew he was fooling himself. But he wanted to pretend something as mundane as eating happened here. Not any of the alternatives flooding his imagination.)

He couldn't pretend any more as he approached. The table looked like it could move, bending part of itself up to hold whatever lay on it at an angle. The metal gleamed in the harsh light, its surface wiped clean recently — Wild could see remnants of streaks of cleaner, disturbing some of the reflected light.

Wild forced himself to take a deep breath. He couldn't afford to lose it again.

Wild picked up the slate and turned it on, the motion so familiar. And he started to read.

The other Sheikah that had come with them were elsewhere in the base. It left him as the sole translator.

He soon wished he wasn't. He read the first two entries in its log, his stomach churning. Two more, and he found himself leaned on the table, heaving the contents of his lunch on the floor.

Twilight ripped the slate from his grip and pulled him away from his own mess.

"Wild? Talk to me."

His hearing was still muffled, but he could decipher words again. He almost wished Twilight and Time were deaf, just so they'd never know what was on that slate.

"We need to know," Time said on his other side, clapping a hand to his shoulder. "So we can help Rulie."

Wild shook his head. He couldn't begin to explain the "experiments" done to his brother. All in the name of making an apparatus.

Was this how the Sheikah had built the original one?

Goddess, he prayed not.

"Was it that bad?" Twilight finally asked.

Wild couldn't get his mouth to work. He just managed to get himself to nod.

"Let's get it to the Sheikah, then," Time decided, moving to pull the slate from his grasp.

But Wild held firm. He knew it was irrational, knew that Time wouldn't be able to read the text. He still wanted to spare Time from seeing just what their brother had been through.

And those entries were only the beginning.

Twilight moved to the door, pausing to ensure that Wild and Time were following. And then they were moving once more.

The slate felt like it burned in Wild's grasp, Sheikah script waiting for someone to read it. Waiting for him.

In the journey back to Kakariko, Wild found himself in a hazy daze. The world seemed to move around him as his mind spun around what he'd learned from the slate. He knew Hyrule had died and been resurrected twelve times. He just didn't know about the how.

Until now.

While they'd camped the night before, Wild stayed up under the covers of his bedroll, reading through the contents stored on the slate. Early in the morning, once he'd finished, he left camp under the pretense he was relieving himself. In actuality, that wasn't entirely incorrect. He was just relieving his stomach of its contents.

He knew he didn't look well when he returned. Twilight had woken up and sent him concerned looks as he'd stumbled back into camp.

Hyrule didn't deserve any of that — didn't deserve to be frozen, poisoned, blinded, electrocuted, didn't deserve to have his spine severed, didn't deserve to die.

It felt like he blinked, and he was in Kakariko once more. He bolted to the inn, where the others had set up and were caring for Hyrule.

Wild needed to see for himself that Hyrule was still alive, still breathing.

He burst through the door, startling Legend. He expected a tongue-lashing from the Veteran, but all he got was a… small smile?

Hyrule laid in bed, eyes closed in sleep, breathing deeply. He was still skeletal and likely would be for a long time. He hadn't had any food in the months he'd been here, only kept alive by the apparatus. They'd need to keep him on a liquid diet for a while.

The others, seated around him, were… laughing? Joking?

"Wild!" Wind exclaimed! "Hyrule made a joke!"

"He asked if I wanted to use his bed," Sky said, a proud smile on his face. "He called me sleepy."

It was a joke Hyrule had made before, not long after they'd all met. Sky had a tendency to fall asleep sitting up, and Hyrule had joked, offering up his bedroll if Sky needed it.

Wild sat heavily on the floor, back thudding against the wall.

"Whoa, you okay, Champion?" Warriors asked.

"Y-yeah," Wild stammered. "It just reminds me… I was kind of a little shit to the king of my era when I first woke up, and I realized later that that's how I was before I was a knight. If he's making jokes, I think that's a good thing."

"How do we help him recover his memories?" Legend asked.

That was going to be one of the trickier parts of recovery.

"He was in that thing a lot, wasn't he?" Four asked.

Wild nodded. "I was only in the real one once, but it was for…" He didn't want to lay out just how long he'd been a failure. "… a long time. I remember waking up, getting out, knowing how to climb but not remembering where I'd learned it. I knew what things were. Hyrule doesn't have that." His gaze landed on the Traveler. He looked so comfortable and so deeply asleep. Wild could easily imagine what Hyrule had looked like after each time he'd died.

"So, we help him with the basics," Warriors said. "Get those down. Then what?"

Wild tilted his head back so he was looking at the ceiling, the straw roof much more interesting. "I didn't have anything or anyone to help me remember things until I was about a month into my journey. What it took was getting that first domino to fall." Meeting Impa and the Zora.

"What do you think that first domino will be?" Four asked. Wild could feel his eyes piercing into him.

"It'll be us," Legend concluded. "We'll stick by him."

"And be careful," Wild said. He drew his hood over his head. "I remember my death, and I wish I didn't."

He couldn't bear their pitying looks, so he wouldn't. Wild stood and left the inn.

He wandered for a while, then, mind deep in his imagination. He couldn't forget the words he'd seen on that slate, the execution methods explained so plainly, the experiments they'd conducted. They didn't even treat Hyrule like the person he was. To those rogues, he was just a test subject. A thing.

The rage erupted again. Wild snarled and turned to the nearest thing he could throw his fist at: a tree. It had no give, of course, and a moment later, pain blossomed from his knuckles.

Of course, nothing he did hurt anything except himself.

He punched it again, right fist this time. The tree didn't even shake. Again, again, again—

Hands grasping and pulling him away — But he had to get back to the tree, he had to get whatever this was out of him.

"Wild — stop!"

He didn't want to stop, didn't want to hold on to the feelings tossing him about like a boat on the ocean. He needed to get them out, but the tree kept getting further away.

They stopped moving. Wild vaguely recognized Twilight's pelt. He pulled away uselessly — Twilight was much stronger than him and could throw Wild all the way back to the inn if he wanted.

Wild shook — from anger, nerves, pure energy, he wasn't sure.

"What're you doing?" Twilight growled. His grip around Wild tightened after a few moments without an answer.

The thing was, Wild didn't know how to answer. Everything in him was so mixed up and confusing. He couldn't forget the words he'd read on the slate, the reports written so callously about "Subject B4" and everything they'd done to him — every cut, burn, slice, electrical shock.

Wild's breath hitched, and a sob escaped him. More tumbled out. His eyes burned. Twilight's grip shifted from a hold to a hug, and Wild sank into it.

"We'll help him," Twilight said. "We'll help him remember."

Wild shook his head violently. "No," he choked out. "He shouldn't remember some things."

"Huh? I remember how devastated you were-"

"I remember how I died," Wild interrupted, voice wet with tears. "I remembered every time I got blasted by a Guardian, how my skin burned, what it was like to die. The things they did to him, Twi —" his breath hitched "—It's so much worse."

Wild felt Twilight grow very still.

"Hyrule is the best of us," Wild said, his voice low. "When he remembers what they did to him, it'll destroy him."

The only sounds for several long moments came from the little waterfalls around the village and cuccos clucking nearby.

"Then we'll help him," Twilight decided. "You had Wolfie to help you, right?"

Wild nodded — a much older Wolfie had been his guide, his teacher, his protector, and — in the darkest times — his comfort. After he'd remembered Blatchery Plain, he'd holed up with Wolfie in the nearby stable. Wolfie had stayed by his side until he'd felt capable of movement again.

They'd likely have to do that for Hyrule, wouldn't they?

"You weren't alone then," Twilight continued, "and you aren't alone now. Same thing with Rulie."

Wild's eyes burned again. Hyrule wouldn't have to bear this alone. The others wouldn't let him. The Champion remembered an evening months ago at a riverside, mind foggy and memories untangling, and the Rancher watching over him, keeping him safe.

Wild would do the same for Rulie. They all would.

He wiped his eyes and took a deep, slow breath. He'd struggled with recovering his own memories, his relationship with Zelda and his own identity coming into question. But Wolfie had been with him every step of the way. And when Zelda had returned, her stories had helped him recover some of the more pleasant memories.

He promised then to himself, to Hyrule, to the Chain, that he would do the same. He would help Hyrule remember himself. And Wild would be a safe place for all of them to land when the bad memories returned.

Wild met Twilight's eyes, and nodded, descending back down the path to the inn. Twilight bumped his shoulder as he passed. Wild let a small smile grow on his face.

As he made his way back to the inn, he started to notice sounds again — wind rustling the talismans at the entrances, children laughing in joy, the shifting of dirt as the farmers tilled the land, the waterfall crashing, cuccoos clucking. Wild relished in it, the sounds so similar to the Kakariko of his own time. He'd found something soothing about being in this same village after he'd awoken. He wondered if he'd felt that way before the Calamity.

Then he let that thought slide. If he found it comforting, Kakariko had likely been a place of rest for him.

And Wild was content to let that thought be.

The inn was filled with quiet chatter as he walked through the entrance. It paused only for a brief moment before continuing.

Hyrule was awake, leaning back against the pillows — though with his tired eyes, Wild wasn't sure how long he'd be able to stay that way.

Wild approached the bed Hyrule lay in. The Traveler's eyes met his, and, like Wild expected, they were searching, looking for any sign of familiarity.

Was this how he'd looked in those weeks after the Shrine?

Now that he was here, Wild wasn't sure what to say. What could he say? No words would be able to solve all these problems. Nor should he expect them to.

Then Hyrule surprised him.

"I know you. Don't I?" Hyrule's voice was quiet from lack of energy.

Wild's own seemed to have escaped him.

Thankfully, it didn't seem like Hyrule had expected him to respond. "You… remind me of things that smell good… delicious. Honey?"

Wild's breath caught in his chest. In the next moment, he found himself smiling widely, eyes burning. "Yeah, Link," he said. "I slip honey candies into your adventure pouch sometimes. And I always make sure you have enough honey with your food."

"Can I have some tonight?"

Wild felt a laugh escape him. "Maybe just a little. We'll see how well your stomach handles more broth."

Hyrule's eyes darted around, checking for listeners. The other Links pretended they were engrossed in their own conversations. "Can you slip some in mine?"

Wild found himself laughing, and Hyrule joined. It wasn't the familiarly light laugh that reminded him of fairies. But it was still Hyrule's.